The Horus Road (52 page)

There was a flicker of movement in the shadows and a man appeared. He did not cross the stone lintel but he bowed. “What do you want of us, Majesty?” he enquired. Ahmose held out his small bundle.

“I bring you my daughter, the Princess Sat-Kamose, for beautification,” he said, his voice trembling.

“We are sorry to hear of her death,” the man replied. “Place her on the ground and step away.” It was time to let her go, but for an instant Ahmose could not relinquish her. With a groan he lifted her to his neck, resting his chin on her windings, squeezing his eyes shut, feeling his tears run hot down his cheeks. Suddenly he was reminded of the day Hent-ta-Hent was buried, how little he had felt then, how selfishly divorced from any genuine grief for the child or compassion for her mother. All at once it was there like an Inundation long delayed, a rush of love and sadness whose force was different from the pricking of his present agony, more seasoned by the time that had passed, perhaps, diffusing under it, filling empty caverns within himself that he had not known existed. He could hardly breathe for the weight of it. The sem-priest waited impassively. At last Ahmose did as he was commanded, laying Sat-Kamose gently down and moving away. The priest at once emerged, picked her up, and quickly regained his place beyond the doorway. “My robe did not touch you but my breath or the emanations of my body may have rendered you unclean,” he went on. “Go to the sacred lake and purify yourself.” With another short bow he vanished and Ahmose was left to retreat to the litter. He felt as abandoned as the dry, eviscerated corpses whose company his child would soon be keeping.

He had himself transported to Amun’s lake. On its peaceful verge he removed his kilt and headdress and stepped down into the cool water until he was completely submerged, allowing his mouth, ears and nostrils to fill with the god’s cleansing touch. Clambering out, he dressed quickly and gave the order to return to the house. I am free of the corruption of her death, he thought, but my soul will always bear the scars of her short life. May the gods receive you joyfully, my innocent little one!

Word of the death had already been spreading through the house by the time he left the litter and made his way back to Aahmes-nefertari’s apartments. In spite of the hour, a few servants hung about the passages. They reverenced him as he swept by them, distress on their faces, but he was too heartsick to acknowledge their sympathy. Aahmesnefertari herself was sitting on the floor with her forehead on her knees when he closed her door behind him at last. She looked up. “It is done,” he said flatly, and going to her he pulled her to her feet. For a while they clung to each other, then she released him.

“Share my couch with me tonight,” she pleaded. “I want to feel your warmth, Ahmose. I am so cold.” For answer he held open the sheets and she climbed between them. He did not bother to undress. Suddenly very weary he lowered himself beside her and at once her arms went around him. There will be no sound from the nursery tonight, he thought, and with the sadness came a sliver of relief.

Next day he moved back into his own rooms and the seventy days of mourning for Sat-Kamose began. Ahmose continued to attend to matters of government every morning. He consulted with Pa-she regarding Ahmoseonkh’s steady progress and set aside several hours each day to spend with the boy. He often joined his mother and Tetisheri in the garden in the late afternoons which were becoming increasingly hot as spring gave way to summer. There was no music and no feasting.

He had expected Aahmes-nefertari to suffer a relapse into depression and sleeplessness and indeed a part of him missed the intense hours they had endured together when he had become her nurse, but she was going about her business calmly and, according to her steward, was eating and resting well. Ahmose saw little of her. She did not avoid him. They often met when their paths crossed outside the reception hall or they were moving in opposite directions through the house, and once he had invited her for a short sail on the river to enjoy the sunset. She was tranquil and smiling but somehow distant, and something told him to leave her alone.

Reports from Sharuhen arrived regularly, each one much the same as the one before. The army was now firmly entrenched around the city. The men were fit. The water was being delivered in scant but sufficient quantity under Abana’s supervision. There were no skirmishes with the mountain tribes and Sharuhen itself seemed entirely oblivious to the Egyptian presence. Ahmose sighed with every seal Ipi broke and exclaimed in disgust after every reading. It will take an act of the gods to open those gates, he reflected glumly. Amunmose told me of the Seer’s prediction, that Sharuhen would fall and Apepa would be mine, but the Seer neglected to tell me exactly when these things would happen. I might be in my sixtieth year and Apepa dead of old age. Seers irritate me. They speak in riddles and still expect to be paid. But he remembered the man’s daunting words regarding Sat-Kamose, unborn and unnamed at the time, and silenced his sacrilegious thoughts.

His attention turned at last to the old palace. He had not wanted to enter it until he was able to revive the many memories and their attendant emotions that its rough walls and echoing rooms had spawned in him. Its past glory had brought melancholy dreams, its ghosts a thrill of fear when he and Kamose crept into it at night as children, its rubble strewn roof where his father had been attacked an overwhelming weight of anger and loss. But during the weeks of mourning for his daughter he found himself often standing in his garden and staring at it across the now smooth and unbroken run of lawn where the wall between it and the house used to be. It is mine by right of my birth, he told himself. It is a King’s mansion, and by moving into it I shall be re-establishing the law of Ma’at in Egypt after so many years of Setiu occupation. But not until one bright, hot morning when he saw Ahmose-onkh come racing around one of its corners and fly, laughing and shrieking, towards the pond with a smiling Pa-she in pursuit did he make up his mind.

He sent for Prince Sebek-nakht, meeting him in the shadow of one of the palace’s towering frontal pillars that now rose straight and true to a dazzlingly blue early summer sky. “Some of the interior walls have been whitewashed, Majesty,” the Prince told him as they walked inside, “but of course no more work is possible until the Princess’s funeral. I am satisfied with what I have done. I hope you will approve of it also.” Ahmose did not reply. Silently he paced the burnished floors that ran away before him into vast, dim caverns, brushed his fingertips along the smooth walls that echoed to his footsteps, stood pensively in pools of white light splashing down from the clerestory windows high above, mounted wide stairs that led to more lofty chambers, and finally found himself on the roof with Weset spread out beneath him in its forest of palms and the Nile glinting between its sandy banks. A shout from below made him turn. Ahmose-onkh had seen him and was waving, a toy child standing in the middle of a little garden. Already Ahmose’s concept of proportions had changed. He waved back. “You will see that I have obeyed your command regarding the narrow stairs leading up to that portion of the roof that sits over the women’s quarters,” Sebek-nakht was saying. “There are doors at its foot and its top and the steps themselves have not even been cleared of rubbish, let alone repaired. Does Your Majesty wish to inspect the new administrative offices to the rear? They are all now complete.” He spoke with a pardonable pride. Ahmose shook his head.

“I am awed by your accomplishment, Prince,” he said. “The palace retains its air of ancient authority yet it is somehow lighter, bigger, the new in harmony with the old.” He spread his hands helplessly. “I cannot express my meaning other than to say I am delighted.” Sebek-nakht smiled.

“It is a dwelling for a god and will be a fit setting for all your divine descendants,” he assured Ahmose. “Apepa’s palace in Het-Uart was a shack compared to it. The Queen has hired the most accomplished artists in the south to decorate its pillars and walls. She has also commissioned tiles of lapis for the floor of the throne room and sheets of gold for its walls. She tells me that sufficient silver and gold is coming into the Royal Treasury to forge the waterstep gates of electrum as you desire. They will shine with the reflected glory of the sun and blind every helmsman trying to steer his craft past them.”

“Aahmes-nefertari has done that?” Ahmose was astonished. Sebek-nakht sobered.

“She gave the orders before the Princess was born,” he said. “Much of her heart has gone into this edifice, Majesty. She has insisted on her personal involvement in every decision that was made. She and your mother have even consulted the gardeners regarding the placing of the surrounding lawns and flowerbeds and they have brought sculptors from Swenet to fashion the fountains.” Ahmose did not trust himself to comment for fear the swelling of his throat might betray him. I am ashamed, he thought. I cared nothing for the dispatches from Weset while I was besieging Het-Uart and marching on Sharuhen. I gave them no more than an impatient few moments. My wife, my family, were less to me than an evening of wine and conversation with my generals by the army’s cooking fires. Amun forgive me. Nodding brusquely he swallowed and started back down to the sun-drenched courtyard below.

On the eleventh day of Epophi, two and a half months after Ahmose had carried Sat-Kamose to the House of the Dead, she was escorted across the river by the whole court and the temple staff and laid in her tiny coffins beside Hent-ta-Hent. Ahmose could not help comparing this funeral with the last. Outwardly it was the same. The women wore mourning blue, cast soil upon their heads, and keened. The red oxen of custom, dragging the sled on which Sat-Kamose lay, plodded towards the tombs on the western bank in clouds of dust. Amunmose wielded the pesesh-kef and the netjeri-blades to open the girl’s mouth and restore life to her five senses. Incense rose shimmering in the heat and the singers and dancers twirled.

But this time every sound and movement, every word of the ritual pains me, Ahmose thought. Hent-ta-Hent’s funeral did not penetrate my restless callousness. Now I am bereft of joy, I am wounded by them both, and all because of a little creature whom I could comfortably hold on the two outstretched palms of my hands. While he ate the feast afterwards with Aahmes-nefertari, he watched Ahmoseonkh edge towards Kamose’s tomb where Behek still kept his vigil. The dog rose with difficulty to greet the boy who knelt and began to caress the grey head. Behek is growing old and stiff, Ahmose mused. One day the priests who tend the tombs will come to offer sacrifices to Kamose and find him dead. I must warn them that he is to be embalmed and buried with honour, close to Kamose. Such faithfulness deserves a reward.

Aahmes-nefertari had said nothing at all during the days spent performing the required rites. Occasionally she wept and Ahmose would pull her close to him, but for the most part she stood with her hands clasped loosely before her, staring at the ground. He was no longer concerned for her health or safety. He knew that there was no desperation in her grieving, because he was sharing it with her. But he also sensed that she was thinking, deeply and fiercely.

Once back at the house he was immediately aware that its atmosphere had changed. It was always so after a funeral. Mourning would begin and a weight of oppression would settle over everyone, to be magically dispelled when the boats returning from the west bumped against the water-steps. He disembarked and he and Aahmes-nefertari walked arm in arm towards the pillars of the front entrance, the other members of the family drifting behind.

Suddenly she tugged him to a halt, and waiting until Aahotep, Tetisheri and a yawning Ahmose-onkh had passed, she let him go. “I have something to say to you, Majesty,” she began in a high, hurried voice. “There has always been a lick of the coward in me. When I was younger I was afraid of almost everything—a threatening omen, the prick of a thorn, a harsh word. I waited constantly for the gods to strike me. Then the war began and I was forced to grapple with real danger, separate it from the phantoms of my mind.” She bit her lip. “I was not very successful. It was not until Kamose was murdered and you were wounded that I discovered a spark of genuine bravery and recklessness in my character. It freed me. But with Hent-ta-Hent’s death all the old terrors returned.” She folded her arms, gripping herself tightly as though she were cold. “I drowned in them. I did not fight. When I became pregnant with Sat-Kamose, the dark waters of self-pity and extreme caution had already closed completely over my head, and by the time she was born I was so ill I could no longer eat, sleep or walk without hatred for myself and for you.” Ahmose made as if to hold her but she stepped away. “No,” she said loudly. “Let me finish. None of it was your fault. None. Then you came home and you were gentle and loving and you saw her and cared for her, for both of us, and something in me began to be ashamed.” Tears were trickling down her face but she was smiling. “I have found my courage again, Ahmose. We have lost our daughters but we will have more children and I will never again be afraid. I will not deny life itself. Will you come to me tonight and make love to me? It has been too long.” Astounded and deeply moved, Ahmose drew her to him, cradling her warm head against his chest.

“Not all the blame is yours, dearest sister,” he said hoarsely. “I have been unforgivably selfish. It would delight me to come to you tonight. I would like nothing better.” He felt her give out a sigh. Still crushing her against him, he turned her towards the house.

He wondered if her outpouring had simply been an extreme reaction to the strain of Sat-Kamose’s funeral, but as the days passed and she remained cheerful and affectionate he came to believe that whatever fires of self-condemnation and revelation had been lit in her had burned themselves out, leaving her permanently changed. She and he were closer than they had ever been, making love happily every night, sitting in audience together, watching Ahmose-onkh learn to swim, and presiding over the increasingly elaborate feasts for the foreign dignitaries, ambassadors and wealthy merchants who had begun to pour into Weset like miners catching a glimpse of a vein of gold in what had been a secluded cave.